Hours after taking oath, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta along with her Cabinet colleagues reached Vasudev Ghat to perform "Yamuna aarti"-inspired by the daily evening ceremony at the ghats of Ganga at Haridwar and Varanasi.
The gesture — apart from being a political message of the party's comeback after 26 years — was also a reaffirmation of the BJP's promise to clean up the river that was once the lifeblood of the centuries-old city but is now little more than a drain. The party leaders then headed to the Delhi secretariat for the first Cabinet meeting.
The pollution in the Yamuna river and cleaning it had become a major issue between the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on the one side and opposition parties BJP and Congress on the other during the run-up to the Delhi Assembhly elections.
AAP convener and former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal was attacked by both the BJP and the Congress over the highly polluted Yamuna.
In its election manifesto, the "Viksit Bharat Sankalp Patra", the BJP had said it would set up a "Yamuna Kosh" for the revitalisation and the riverfront development project.
For now, the four-fold plan for the clear-up announced by the Lieutenant Governor's office involves the removal of trash and silt from the river and the drains — including the Najafgarh drain that contributes the most to the pollution — expanding the sewage treatment capacity to 1,000 million gallons per day and common effluent treatment plant capacity to 220 MLD.
Gupta, along with Delhi BJP state president Virendra Sachdeva and her cabinet colleagues — Parvesh Sahib Singh, Asish Sood, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, Ravinder Indraj Singh, Kapil Mishra and Pankaj Kumar Singh — performed 'Maa Yamuna puja' before conducting aarti ahead of the first cabinet meeting. Ram bhajans were played at the ghat, and slogans of "Jai Shree Ram" and "Yamuna Maiya Ki Jai" were raised. Earlier in the day, Gupta, the first-time MLA from Shalimar Bagh, was administered oath as the chief minister by Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena in a grand ceremony at the Ramlila Maidan. Her council of ministers was also sworn in.
